A Field Guide to the Most Competitive House Races in America

After two years of unified Republican government in Washington, the 2018 midterm elections are finally upon us, when Democrats will have their first opportunity to win seats in the House and wrest control of Capitol Hill from their colleagues across the aisle. And while this year's electoral map does no favors for their efforts to win the Senate, of the 30 House races that the Cook Political Report rates as toss-ups, 29 of them are for a seat currently occupied by a Republican—and Democrats need to pick up only 23 seats in order to take the gavel from Paul Ryan's hands.

Over the past ten weeks, I've been taking a closer look at 31 of the most competitive contests scattered in swing states throughout the country: Where are these key swing districts, and what are they like? What's been going on in the race? Who is the incumbent legislator trying to keep their job, and who is working hard to take it away from them? Because if Democrats do manage to flip the House on Tuesday, these are the names you're going to be hearing about.

The district: Modesto and its surrounding environs, so basically a Sons of Anarchy set. This is one of seven districts in California that went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 while somehow also sending a Republican to Washington. More than 40 percent of its residents are Hispanic, and about one-sixth were born outside the United States. Unemployment in the district is high, at 9.2 percent.

The incumbent: Jeff Denham, an Air Force veteran turned plastics manufacturer who is notable for sometimes threatening to buck the Trumpian wing of his party on immigration—which, of course, is his only viable electoral strategy—but not for following through. In March, he championed a promising-looking discharge petition that, if successful, would have forced a vote over Paul Ryan’s objections on a bipartisan immigration reform bill. The petition failed by two votes—and after Ryan and company turned the screws on Denham, he didn't even sign on to it. So much for courage!

The challenger: Venture capitalist Josh Harder, a Turlock native who now teaches at Modesto Junior College. He’s running on a Medicare-for-all, abolish-Citizens-United platform, and made the top-two general election ballot after winning 17 percent of the vote in the primary. (Denham wasn’t much better, at 37.5 percent.) Five Democrats jostling behind Harder earned about 30 percent between them, though, so Harder hopes that those candidates’ supporters will line up behind him when it counts.

Today in disturbing animal-adjacent idioms: After “weeks” of negotiating, Denham and Harder agreed to sit for a “rare” debate before the Modesto Bee's editorial board in September. The board's ensuing endorsement, which began by referring to Trump's presidency as the proverbial elephant in the race, did not mince words.

If you like what our nation is becoming, send Denham back to Congress. But if you’re worried about millions being left behind economically, that healthcare is endangered, that discrimination is increasing, that our nation is sundered by rage fueled on both sides by an angry, unchecked president, then vote for Josh Harder.

Vote for Harder despite his inexperience and lack of civic involvement. Vote to leash the orange elephant.

A visual I could have done without!

California 25th: A potential political star waits in the wings

Bill Clark

The district: A big chunk of northern Los Angeles County, including Palmdale, Lancaster, and parts of the Valley, which means everyone considers the Lakers their home team despite living, at best, a 19-hour drive from Staples Center. It's about 40 percent Hispanic, and 20 percent of constituents were born outside the United States. Hillary Clinton won it by nearly seven points.

The incumbent: Steve Knight, an Air Force veteran and former LAPD officer who is now Los Angeles County's lone Republican in Congress. He was coy during the 2016 campaign, calling the Access Hollywood tapes "deeply disturbing," and he ultimately declined to endorse either Clinton or Trump. Afterwards, though, he of course revealed that he voted for Trump, and has backed the president nearly 99 percent of the time since.

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The challenger: Katie Hill, the 30-year-old executive director of a homelessness nonprofit. Despite swearing off corporate and super-PAC money, she's out-raised Knight by more than $4 million. Hill is a self-described lifelong gun owner who has nonetheless earned the support of Moms Demand Action, and she's been endorsed by both of her state's senators, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, and a certain former president by the name of Barack Obama. Also, Kristen Bell!

Holy shit, look at this: A good rule of thumb in politics is that if your 30-second ad begins with a "WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT WITHOUT RIGOROUS TRAINING AND PROPER SAFETY EQUIPMENT" disclaimer, you're doing it right.

That's not a voice-over. She's actually reading her lines while free-climbing a giant boulder! Of the many, many reasons there should be more millennials in Washington—we're the country's largest bloc of eligible voters; civic participation is important; the average member of Congress is literally a senior citizen and an alarming number of them are hell-bent on destroying the planet—the coming bumper crop of dope-ass spots like this one cannot be overlooked.

The district: Straddles the border between Los Angeles County and Orange County, but the parts that aren't photogenic enough to make it into soft-lit teen soap operas on Fox: Fullerton, Yorba Linda, and Buena Park. About one-third Asian, and one-third Hispanic. More than 40 percent of residents have a bachelor's degree, and the median income is around $85,000. Oh, and Hillary Clinton won it by more than eight points.

The incumbent: House Foreign Affairs Committee chair and occasional Islamophobe sympathizer Ed Royce, who abruptly announced his retirement from Congress not long after the release of a poll in which his constituents—furious with, among other things, his support for the tax bill, which had a disproportionate impact on Californians' tax burden—indicated their preference for a generic "Democratic opponent" in 2018.

The contenders: The Democrat is Gil Cisneros, a former Frito-Lay distribution manager who won a cool $266 million lottery jackpot in 2010 and who, suffice to say, no longer concerns himself with the logistics of placing high-calorie snack foods. Cisneros is a public-option proponent endorsed by the DCCC, and emerged from a bruising primary in which he and his opponent, Andy Thorburn, traded accusations of tax fraud and faking voicemails to use as fodder in attack ads. (Politico deemed it "the weirdest race in the country.") The Republican is Young Kim, a Korean immigrant and one-term state assemblywoman who came up as an aide to Royce, and now hopes to claim his seat.

All politics is local: Much of the media coverage thus far has centered on demographic narratives: The race features a Hispanic Democrat squaring off against an Asian Republican, in a district that is home to sizable populations of both minority groups. As usual, however, the important issues are less sexy (and less reductive): In June, Democratic state senator Josh Newman—whose district included much of the 39th—was ousted in a recall election spurred by his decision to support a 12-cent-per-gallon state gas tax. In a close race, Republicans are hoping that lingering resentment over Newman's yes vote will propel Kim to victory. (Also, Newman's replacement? Republican Ling Ling Chang, a 42-year-old woman who immigrated from Taiwan as a toddler. Just saying.)

The district: Another wealthy slice of inland Orange County, including Irvine, Orange, and Tustin. (Go Anteaters?) It's pretty diverse—25 percent Asian, and 18 percent Hispanic. McCain and Romney won by comfortable margins in 2008 and 2012, respectively, but in 2016, Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 5.4 points.

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The incumbent: Mimi Walters, a former investment banker and two-term congresswoman who is now attempting the same tightrope walk as most California Republicans in purple districts: Be Trump-y, but not too Trump-y. Although she's voted with the president a solid 98.9 percent of the time, Walters has pivoted to local for the campaign, attaching herself to a GOP-backed ballot initiative that would repeal the state's controversial gasoline tax. She has also blamed climate change for exacerbating Southern California's wildfires, which is both (1) probably correct and (2) given her lifetime 4 percent rating from the League of Conservation voters, a little late!

The challenger: Katie Porter, a UC Irvine law professor tapped by then-California attorney general Kamala Harris in 2012 to be the state's independent bank monitor of banks in aftermath of the housing crisis. Both Harris and Elizabeth Warren, who taught Porter at Harvard Law School and later worked with her at the CFPB, have lent Porter their endorsements. She supports Medicare for All, and as you might expect, she speaks frequently about the need to address the student loans bubble, the specter of which will be haunting this writer's dreams until 2029.

From the archives: In May 2016, by a 217-206 vote, the House passed an amendment to a spending bill that would have prohibited the government from contracting with entities that discriminate against LGBTQ employees. As voting wound down, however, majority whip and likely Paul Ryan replacement Kevin McCarthy took to the floor and began lobbying individual Republican legislators to change their minds. Seven of them did, and Mimi Walters was one of them. The amendment failed in dramatic fashion by a single vote, as outraged Democrats chanted "Shame!" at their counterparts across the aisle.

Unlike some of her GOP colleagues, Mimi Walters knows that bigotry is wrong. She just can't bring herself to stand up to it.

California 48th: "Putin's favorite congressman" is on the ropes in Southern California

The district's population is about 20 percent Hispanic and 18 percent Asian. As you may have gleaned from The O.C., it's very wealthy. (Average household income: $130,080.) Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 1.7 points.

The incumbent: Dana Rohrabacher, who has served for three decades now as the Russian government's most effective lobbyist in Washington not named Alexander Ovechkin or Elizabeth Jennings. (His friendship with Putin has long been the subject of alarmingly flippant jokes on Capitol Hill: "There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump," House majority leader Kevin McCarthy said in a secretly recorded 2016 conversation with Paul Ryan. "Swear to God.")

The challenger: Harley Rouda, a business executive and longtime Republican—he gave money to John Kasich in 2016—who says Trump's win was the end of his lengthy come-to-Jesus political journey. It was apparently an illuminating one; today, his website makes dollars-and-cents-based arguments for free tuition at public colleges and universities and touts Medicare for all as the "long-term solution" for this country's broken health-care system. He also looks at all times like a guy running ten minutes late for his tee time with Sandy Cohen.

Wait, he donated to John Kasich?: Yeah. He explained in a lengthy Facebook post (always a good start) that Kasich is a close friend and that he "wanted to stop Donald Trump and his divisive campaign." Otherwise, he says, "I supported Hillary Clinton," and says he's voted Democrat since 2004.

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Even when viewed in the most charitable possible light, giving money to the campaign of a politician whose agenda you purport to oppose is, uh, dumb. In this longtime Republican stronghold, though, Rouda's history may appeal to moderate-conservative types who aren't ready to pin DSA roses on their lapels, but also aren't thrilled that their current member of Congress shows up in Mueller investigation plea documents with notable frequency.

Colorado 6th: A bellwether district in the Denver suburbs

Bill Clark/Getty Images

The district: Centennial, Highlands Ranch, and the suburbs that ring the eastern side of Denver. Clinton beat Trump here by an astonishing nine points in 2016, and it went for Obama twice before that. It's growing quickly and loaded with independents, and about 16 percent of residents were born outside the United States.

The incumbent: Republican Mike Coffman, who contains multitudes, which is a polite way of saying that he knows his district has left him behind, and he's open to saying whatever might yield him another two years in office. He was for the tax bill but against Obamacare repeal; he ran an ad promising to "stand up" to Trump in 2016 but has spent the past two years voting for a ton of Trump's pet policies; he made a big show of opposing the Muslim ban and family separations, but also said that he supports a "transition" to a zero-tolerance immigration policy. What do you look for in a congressman? Mike Coffman is happy to be it.

The challenger: Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger turned law-firm partner who takes a great marketing headshot. The way he got here was a little sketchy—in April, The Intercept published a secret recording of House minority whip Steny Hoyer urging Crow's primary opponent to drop out, which is both a bad look and also, given the Democratic Party's recent track record of picking congressional candidates, not necessarily great advice. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, Crow has since declared that if elected, he wouldn't support a Pelosi speakership bid. He's made gun control a central issue—Aurora, the site of a 2012 movie-theater shooting, is the largest city in the district.

Holy crap: A September New York Times poll had Crow up 11 points, but good Lord, so much money is going to be spent here. In 2016, the candidates and outside groups blew through close to $20 million, making it the fifth most expensive House race in the country. Since this is one of those contests that everyone seems to think will predict control of Congress, expect this year's figure to eclipse that. By Election Day, these people won't be able to go outside without being urged to vote for a white guy whose last name starts with C.

Florida 26th: Carlos Curbelo is the most vulnerable Republican in the country

Bill Clark

The district: The Everglades, and the Florida Keys! It only took one season of gazing in awe at Bloodline's gorgeous establishing shots for me to insist to my wife that we needed to drive the 127-mile Overseas Highway from Miami to Key West, and it remains one of the neatest places I've ever seen. (Long stretches of it feel like someone dropped the Bay Bridge in, well, a tropical paradise.) It's about 72 percent Latino, and half of its residents were born outside the United States. Hillary Clinton won it by 16 points (!) in 2016.

The incumbent: Two-term Republican congressman Carlos Curbelo, who has spent two years walking one of the most politically perilous tightropes in the country. He's trying his hardest; Curbelo backed a post-Las Vegas effort to ban bump stocks, condemned the administration's family separation policy, and even introduced a carbon tax bill. (It wasn't great, but still.) And along with Arizona congresswoman and Democratic Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema, Curbelo co-founded the Future Caucus to try and unite millennials in Congress across party lines. (He spoke to GQ about it in June 2017.)

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The challenger: Debbie Muscarel-Powell, an Ecuadorian-born immigrant and longtime nonprofit fundraiser who mounted a better-than-expected 2016 state senate campaign in her district, and this time wants to represent it in D.C. She's been playing up Curbelo's vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and has pledged to protect Medicare against the forthcoming Republican attempts to gut it. Muscarel-Powell lost her father to a shooting when she was 24, and is a vocal proponent of gun safety proposals that her opponent, independent though he may be, won't support. She has also outraised Curbelo during the campaign's stretch run, prompting prognosticators to move the race to a late toss-up.

Results matter: Curbelo has worked to position himself as the neutral referee of Capitol Hill—literally, in a recent campaign ad. "The left blocked my DREAMers solution," he says. "I called them out, and kept working. The right didn't do enough for our environment, or school safety. I called that one too."

The ad fails to acknowledge that his "DREAMer solution" was, as the Miami New Timesnoted, a PR stunt that proposed "draconian cuts" to legal immigration and allocated billions for the border wall; it also fails to acknowledge that, uh, everyone on the basketball court hates refs. But Curbelo's fundamental problem is that his constituents want more than a congressman who talks about climate change—they want one who can do something about climate change. Even though he's more moderate than just about every Republican incumbent we've covered in this series, his inability to deliver on his promises has placed his job in jeopardy.

Illinois 6th: Can the survivor do it again?

Bloomberg

The district: A vast array of Chicago suburbs, none of which are remotely distinguishable from one another. Mostly white, with an average household income of a shade over $125,000. Went for Clinton in 2016. It includes a town called Sleepy Hollow, which features streets named after characters in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, because wealthy bedroom commuters love gratuitous literary references more than they dislike being associated with decapitated ghouls.

The incumbent: Six-term congressman Peter Roskam, one of the few sitting members who can tout the Republican tax reform bill as a success on the campaign trail, since many of his constituents are precisely the kind of rich people that the bill was designed to help.

The challenger: Sean Casten, a clean energy executive who has doggedly worked to tie Roskam to “walking disaster” Donald Trump during debates, a strategy that forced Roskam to concede during a debate that Trump is not Abraham Lincoln, Illinois’ favorite native son. (“Never telling a lie, Abraham Lincoln—is that the standard?” Roskam asked, conflating apocryphal stories about our first and sixteenth presidents. “No, I wouldn’t put him in that category.”)

Walking the line: Roskam has gotten so good at winning races he’s supposed to lose that he keeps a résumé of them, which at once acknowledges this year’s “challenging” midterm environment while reassuring prospective donors that he can overcome it. In a district Clinton won by seven points, his political tiptoe game is strong: Visitors to his web site, for example, encounter the president’s name only when Roskam discusses his opposition to Trump’s tariffs. (His views on the Lincoln tariffs that helped win the Civil War remain unclear.)

The district: Extends from the suburbs east of St. Louis down along the Missouri border into the heart of Little Egypt before ending at the Illinois-Kentucky border. The district's population is about 17 percent black. It's pretty rural, and the average household income is a bit less than $50,000. Obama won here twice, but Trump beat Clinton by 15 points in 2016.

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The incumbent: Two-term Republican Mike Bost, a former Marine and union firefighter who achieved a certain measure of notoriety back in 2012, when the then-state legislator received a copy of a 200-page pension reform bill just moments before the chamber was set to vote. Bost—who now collects $6,084 per month from the general assembly's pension fund in addition to his $174,000 annual salary—was not happy with this development.

I think my favorite part comes when he throws several fistfuls of paper in the air, because several sheets land in the laps of the two men on either side of him, and as he continues to scream, they just calmly pick up the papers and peer at their contents like they're studying a dessert menu.

The challenger: Navy veteran and county prosecutor Brendan Kelly, who is breaking from the national party on some issues (he's not opposed to a border wall, and is opposed to an assault weapons ban and a potential Pelosi speakership) but not others (Obamacare, and his opponent's strident efforts to repeal it).

To a greater extent than many challengers, Kelly is focusing heavily on the state of his district, organizing his priorities under two soberly-titled plans, "Save Southern Illinois" and "Restore Faith in Southern Illinois." This is smart: In purple Obama-to-Trump districts like this one, where disappearing manufacturing jobs and a stagnant economy prompted disgruntled Obama voters to give the "America first" guy a try, Kelly's job is less to demonize Trump than it is to show that Trump and the Republicans haven't made their lives better, and in some ways have made their lives worse.

For example: During the GOP's 2017 Obamacare repeal effort, Bost was one of many cowardly Republicans who stopped holding town halls in an effort to avoid having to face their furious constituents. For some godforsaken reason, while explaining his decision to a local editorial board, Bost seized on the opportunity to showcase his racial insensitivity, too. From the Southern Illinoisan:

“The amount of time that I have at home is minimal, I need to make sure that it’s productive,” Bost said Friday. “You know the cleansing that the Orientals used to do where you’d put one person out in front and 900 people yell at them? That’s not what we need. We need to have meetings with people that are productive.”

A spokesperson hastily clarified that he was referring to the practice of public humiliations during China's Cultural Revolution, and Bost apologized for what he charitably called a "poor choice of words," but not for his failure to update his vocabulary since the Nixon administration.

Iowa 1st: The most relatable candidates in America are the ones with debt

Tom Williams/Getty Images

The district: Northeast Iowa, east of I-35: Waterloo, Dubuque, and Cedar Rapids, which you may remember as the setting for an underrated 2011 Ed Helms movie of the same name. It's very white (98 percent!). It twice went for Obama by healthy margins, but flipped in 2016, when Trump won it by 3.5 points.

The incumbent: Republican Rod Blum, a climate science skeptic and Freedom Caucus doofus who just became the subject of the world's worst-timed House Ethics Committee investigation. When his membership in a Facebook group in which members posted racist content (the group is named "Tea Party"—imagine that) recently came to light, an AP reporter reached out to his office to follow up. Rod Blum got really, really mad about it.

You may also remember Blum from this 2017 interview in which he responded to an interviewer's question about why he screens attendees at his town halls by tearing off his microphone and storming out of the room, leaving the bewildered kids he had assembled around him as props just kind of standing there.

The NERVE of these JOURNALISTS, to ASK QUESTIONS of an ELECTED OFFICIAL about MATTERS OF PUBLIC CONCERN!

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The challenger: Abby Finkenaeur, a 29-year-old state legislator who is still paying off her student loans. She's especially popular among unions thanks to her staunch advocacy for organized labor while serving in Des Moines. Her debut ad prominently features her welder dad literally wringing sweat out of a leather belt.

All politics is local: Iowa is one of the country's largest producers of soybeans, one of the products hit hardest by President Trump's various trade wars. (Experts have estimated that retaliatory Chinese tariffs could cost Iowan farmers $624 million.) This has not stopped Blum from thanking Trump, praising the president for showing "political courage" on the issue. As they always say in politics, anytime you can align yourself with an unpopular president whose policies are putting the squeeze on working-class voters whose support you'll need to fend off a formidable challenger, you have to do it.

Iowa 3rd: A first-time candidate campaigns in 2020's most important city

Bill Clark

The district: The state's southwest corner, from the Omaha suburbs to Des Moines and its environs. Anytime a prominent Democrat visits here for any reason, check to see if the theirname2020.com domain has been registered yet, and if not, sit on it and see if you can make a buck. Trump won by 3.5 points in this middle-income, mostly white district that Obama took home twice.

The incumbent: David Young, who like many Iowa Republicans has been struggling with the fact that Donald Trump's trade war is absolutely hammering the state's agricultural industry. He's been voicing his frustrations with the back-and-forth, retaliatory nature of tariffs, and the White House's recent decision to lift restrictions on summertime use of high-ethanol gasoline was seen largely as an olive branch to angry Iowans caught in the middle of the president's harebrained strategy.

The challenger: Des Moines native and small business owner Cindy Axne, who like many Iowa Democrats has been thrashing her opponent in the fundraising battle of late. On the campaign trail, she's discussed how she and her husband had to sell their things on eBay in order to pay hospital bills after the birth of their second child, and she supports a Medicare public option as "the best opportunity to get to universal coverage."

Sportsball: It's tough to find an interview with Cindy Axne in which she doesn't proudly mention her days playing something called "6-on-6" hoops as a kid. It turns out that sport this was an institution in Iowa women's high school athletics for decades until the early 1990s; teams are divided into three guards and three forwards, but the trick is that guards must stay in the backcourt and play defense, while forwards must stay in the frontcourt and are the only ones who can shoot. No one can dribble more than twice before passing or shooting, so the ball is constantly flying back and forth, and it's...pretty dang riveting to watch! (In this interview, one Denise Long discusses the time she put up 110 points in a single game against poor Dows High School! Eat shit, Wilt Chamberlain!)

If Cindy Axne wins, I ask her to bring co-ed 6-on-6 with her to Washington; if Ted Cruz wins, I ask her to dunk on him as often as humanly possible.

Kansas 2nd: Where Republicans are really rethinking this whole Citizens United thing

Tom Williams

The district: Eastern Kansas but not Kansas City: Topeka, Lawrence, and the University of Kansas. Mostly white, mostly working-class, pretty flat. Rock Chalk.

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The incumbent: Lynn Jenkins, who became mildly famous in 2009 for urging Republicans to find a "great white hope" to fight President Obama's agenda—she later apologized and said that she was only referring to certain "bright lights" in the party, which is not at all a synonym for the phrase she used, but okay!—is calling it quits after a decade in Congress. Please join me in wishing her the best in her search for a job in which she can put her racist idioms and nonsensical excuses for uttering them to good use.

The contenders: The Democrat is Paul Davis, the former minority leader of the Kansas House of Representatives. He narrowly lost a 2014 bid to unseat Sam Brownback as governor, and he's still running on an anti-Brownback message, both because Brownback's catastrophic state tax cuts were a test case for the wildly unpopular Trump tax bill, and also because even though Brownback left office almost a year ago, Kansans still hate him.

Your Republican is Steve Watkins, whose candidacy is being buoyed almost exclusively by a super-PAC that his dad, a wealthy doctor, controls. This doofus voted for the first time in his life on the day he launched his campaign, and his rivals in the primary despise him for pulling what they see as a shameless, carpetbagging stunt. A representative quote, from The Kansas City Star:

“Clearly, this is the way the affluent get their middle-aged kids out of the basement,” said state Sen. Steve Fitzgerald, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and one of Watkins’ primary foes. Later, he added, “He’s a charlatan, a fraud and an opportunist.”

He also won. This is an election in the United States of America, Fitz. Money talks, and bullshit finishes a distant fourth.

Live by the super-PAC, die by the super-PAC: Trump walloped Clinton here by more than 18 points in 2016, but with Trust Fund McGee swiping a spot on the ballot from his more qualified competitors, Democrats are hopeful that low Republican enthusiasm for the unknown Watkins will allow them to flip the seat. Hmmm, it is almost as if a system that allows wealthy donors to engage in unlimited political spending as long as they don't "coordinate" with a campaign is...bad for representative democracy! IMAGINE THAT.

Kansas 3rd: Sharice Davids could make history

The Washington Post

The district: Kansas City—the little one, not the big one—and its suburbs. The district is very white and sports some very weird voting patterns: Romney blew out Obama in 2012, but Hillary edged Trump by 1.2 points in 2016.

The incumbent: Kevin Yoder, first elected to the House in the Tea Party midterms at age 34. You may remember him as the guy who had to apologize for skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee on a congressional trip to Israel in 2011. He received an admonishment from then House majority leader Eric Cantor, and the FBI apparently looked into the incident, but since making poor decisions is not a federal crime, they closed their investigation without any findings of wrongdoing. As chair of the House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on national security, he is well-positioned to champion the border wall that will never get built, which makes him a favorite of you-know-who.

The challenger: Thirty-eight-year-old attorney Sharice Davids, who is Native American, openly gay, and a former professional MMA fighter. She won a very competitive primary, and her ad will make you want to punch a hole in something for DEMOCRACY.

Davids raised a ton of money from small-dollar donations, and if she wins, she'll become one of the first two Native American women ever to serve in the United States Congress. (Deb Haaland is running for a safe Democratic seat in New Mexico.)

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We all know what you mean, Kevin: Just before the Democratic primary, when it remained unclear whether Davids or her chief rival, Brent Welder, would triumph, Yoder warned a crowd of his supporters that "neither of them are from here, and both want to force their radical ideas on those of us who have dedicated our entire lives to this community and this state." Then, placing the dog whistle gently to his mouth and blowing as hard as he could, he continued: "They don’t know Kansas, they don’t know our values, and neither of them should be our voice in Washington, D.C."

The "our values" reference incensed the Kansas City Star editorial board, which lambasted Yoder's "minute-to-minute malleability" as a politician and proceeded to deliver a line-by-line fisking of his comments.

As a Native American, oh yes, Davids is very much from here. As a graduate of Leavenworth High, where she lived until her single mom retired from the Army there, and of Johnson County Community College, yes, she is from around here.

As someone who graduated from Cornell Law, was in private practice, worked on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and then was a White House fellow, she could have gone anywhere but chose to come back to Kansas. So yes, she is from around here.

Yeah, of all the arguments one could make about an opponent, "She is bad because she has has paid rent in more than one congressional district during her life" is as flimsy as it is baffling.

He could not have been knocking the work ethic of a woman who worked her way through college and law school, or the discipline of a former mixed martial arts fighter.

We hope he wasn’t talking about the fact that she’d be the first Native American woman elected to Congress and the first openly LGBT person to represent Kansas.

Sure seems like he might have been!

Kentucky 6th: A pioneering military hero makes a bid for Washington

Bill Clark

The district: Lexington, Frankfort, and Richmond. Every Bourbon Trail bachelor party ends here, at which point all of its participants bid farewells to one another while secretly wishing they had just rented a cabin in Tahoe like they originally intended. It's pretty white, and went for Trump by 15 points in 2016.

The incumbent: Andy Barr, a lawyer who treats "feminist" as a slur and has spent most of his time in Washington railing against the evils of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He is a generic and boring and unremarkable Republican, and honestly, we shouldn't spend much more time on him, because his opponent is, well....

The challenger: Amy McGrath, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who owns the distinction of being the first woman Marine to fly a combat mission in an F-18. (She completed 89 of them in Iraq and Afghanistan during her 20 years on active duty.) If the video she used to launch her campaign doesn't make your heart swell with patriotic pride—it includes both aircraft carriers and a sly middle finger to her former congressman, who told her when she was a child that women don't fly in combat because they "ought to be protected"—you might be legally dead.

Time for a gaffe: Look, I'm not a politician. I've never run for office, or managed a campaign, or written a speech, or anything of the sort. But I do know that if you're Andy Barr—a member of this nation's foremost performative troop-respecting cohort, trying to hold on to a congressional seat in what observers expect to be a very tough race—one thing you should avoid doing is equating your opponent's two decades of military service to your own career as a middling legislator. And yet! From The New York Times:

“We both served our country,” Mr. Barr said. “I’ve served in a position where ideas matter. My opponent has served her country in the military, where execution matters.”

If Andy Barr wants to keep his job, he would be well-advised to stop reminding his constituents of his shittiness on such a frequent basis.

Maine 2nd: An Iraq War veteran vs. a guy who finds tattoos icky

Congressional Quarterly

The district: Everything in Maine that isn’t Portland, Augusta, and those cities’ respective suburbs. This means that it is white, rural, and full of people who add superfluous syllables to words that end in “R.”

The incumbent: Former investment manager Bruce Poliquin, New England’s only remaining Republican member of Congress. Over the last few years, he’s gone from being one of three GOP representatives to vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act—“I need to see how we're going to fix this, and not just be someone who votes for the 56th time to repeal this,” he said in 2015—to another older white guy trying to make constituents afraid of brown people.

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The challenger: State lawmaker and Marine Corps veteran Jared Golden, who is making a savvy pitch to voters by leaning left on things that are more popular with district residents (for example, Medicare for All) and right on things that are not (for example, gun control.

Time for some hilarious local ads: How has a prominent Republican super PAC attacked Golden, who was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq during his military career, and who has been very public about his struggles with post-traumatic stress once he resumed civilian life? By pointing out that he has tattoos. Why, those are like permanent drawings! ON YOUR BODY! Can anyone who willingly bears such things on their person be trusted with the business of governance?

Golden’s response is the most Maine half-minute ever recorded on camera, and is charming enough, as long as you don’t take the throw-Bruce-Poliquin-into-the-ocean conceit too literally.

Michigan 8th: An ex–Obama official has this whole fundraising thing down already

Bloomberg

The district: A stretch of counties along I-96 between Lansing and the Detroit suburbs. It went for Obama in 2008, Romney in 2012, and then Trump in 2016. Michigan State University, an otherwise unobjectionable institution of higher education that was helmed for decades by a horrific cabal of abuser-enabling monsters who should all be fired at best and jailed at worst, is located here.

The incumbent: Mike Bishop, a longtime state legislator who is wrapping up his second term in Congress. As a member of the Ways & Means Committee, he was one of the drafters of the Republican tax bill. He is also a lifelong Oakland County resident, and his website is unnervingly invested in making sure you know it.

Mike Bishop and his family have lived in the 8th district their whole lives. Mike is our neighbor who has served our community with honor and dignity. Mike Bishop enjoys serving the 8th District because it is his home where he has always lived. Mike Bishop has never bought a house in Washington because his home is here. While Mike REPRESENTS the people of the 8th District in Washington, HIS HOME is IN MICHIGAN and always will be IN MICHIGAN. Congressman Bishop lives to serve his neighbors, friends and family.

Why the performative provincialism, you ask?

The challenger: Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and Obama-era Pentagon official who moved back home to Michigan after 2016 and launched her bid for Congress shortly thereafter. Her platform is heavy on national security- and military-related issues, but it's pretty robust across the board, especially compared to Bishop's, which consists mostly of vagaries and, again, urgent reminders about where he lives.

C.R.E.A.M.: Despite a pledge not to take corporate PAC dollars, Slotkin has been smoking Bishop on the fundraising circuit, outpacing him by $2.5 million as of September 30. Representatives of the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super-PAC affiliated with Paul Ryan, are not happy about it. From The Detroit News:

“If you’re an incumbent member of Congress and getting outraised, you should either work harder or spend time working on your résumé," he said.

“I think if you’re being outraised, it’s largely just work ethic. I find it very hard to believe this many Republican incumbents were spending 15 hours a week doing all the grunt work to raise money and getting outraised.”

Yikes. CLF set aside at least $2.2 million for this race, though, which means that even though the single most important skill in American politics is one of Bishop's glaring weaknesses, Slotkin will still have her hands full in November.

Michigan 11th: Two millennial women make their pitches to America's auto industry

Bill Clark

The district: An collection of absurdly-gerrymandered suburbs to the west of Detroit. This thing looks like... one of those lab-shower-and-eyewash-station combinations in a high school chemistry classroom, maybe?

It's about 10 percent Asian, and five percent black. It's pretty wealthy. (Average household income: $107,646). It went for Obama in 2008, but for Romney and Trump in 2012 and 2016, respectively.

The incumbent: Dave Trott, a two-term congressman who once referred to town hall attendees protesting his attempts to take health care away from poor people as "un-American crap." Trott is retiring in order to "spend more time with his family" and "return to the private sector" (as he explained when he announced in September 2017), and because he is tired of dealing with Donald Trump (as he admitted a few months later).

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The contenders: A pair of thirtysomething women, neither of whom have sought elected office before. Your Republican is Lena Epstein, a 37-year-old local businesswoman who co-chaired Donald Trump's 2016 campaign in Michigan. Afterwards, she penned a fawning op-ed in which she praised the president-elect's "ability to lead by example and embody unity," which may have been, in retrospect, a tad premature. The Democrat is 35-year-old Haley Stevens, the former chief of staff to Obama "car czar" Steve Ratter, who oversaw the Great Recession bailout of the auto industry. She's running on a Medicare public option and a $15-per-hour minimum wage.

The Obama-vs.-Trump proxy fight: Both candidates have strong ties to the most influential sector of the local economy: Epstein's company is a well-known auto lubricant manufacturer, while Stevens helped save Chrysler and GM from liquidation. And by virtue of the their employment history, it's easy to see the race as one between the president and his predecessor, which is slightly better news for Stevens. Earlier this year, Epstein was calling Trump "the best president in American history" and openly pondering joining the Freedom Caucus if she were to win; these days, she's praising Congress' "many tremendous caucuses" and professing her desire "to be working across the aisle." The unity shtick was a little too soon; this shtick might be a little too late.

Minnesota 1st: Bloggers make bad politicians

Bill Clark

The district: The state's southern border with Iowa. It's mostly farmland. The Mayo Clinic is here. It went for Obama twice, by narrow margins, and then for Trump by 15 points.

The incumbent: Tim Walz, first elected to Congress in 2006, is leaving office to run for governor as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nominee. Given that he squeaked out his re-election bid in 2016 by less than one point, this seems like a prudent choice.

The contenders: The Democrat is Dan Feehan, a 36-year-old Army combat veteran and Obama-era Pentagon official who recently moved home to the district in which he grew up. His Republican challenger is Jim Hagedorn, the son of former Minnesota congressman Tom Hagedorn, who is running for this seat for a fourth time: He was defeated in a primary bid in 2010, and won the GOP nomination but lost in the general election to Walz in 2014 and again in 2016.

How is Jim Hagedorn so bad at this?: Easy—because before entering politics, Hagedorn was a U.S. Treasury Department official by day and a goddamn lunatic right-wing blogger by night. Some of his more charming missives include labeling Barack Obama's campaign as a "low-budget remake of Eddie Murphy's hit comedy Coming to America"; referring to Democratic senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray as "undeserving bimbos in tennis shoes"; and calling Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court opinion that prohibited the criminalization of same-sex consensual sexual activity, an "abomination on par with the deviancy it attempted to condone." A representative excerpt from his incisive analysis of the 2008 presidential race:

This illustrious past prompted The Washington Examiner to deem this sad-ass retread "the worst Republican candidate in America," which in turn prompted Dana Rohrabacher to breathe a deep sigh of relief.

Minnesota 2nd: Angie Craig wants a rematch

Bill Clark

The district: The suburbs across the Mississippi River to the south of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Red Wing, home of the company that makes a mean pair of work boots, is in this district. It's mostly white, and pretty wealthy. Trump eked out a 1.2-point win here.

The incumbent: Former conservative talk radio host Jason Lewis, first elected to Congress in 2016. Lewis is, to put it delicately, a vile shithead with misogynist spaghetti for brains. Here's Lewis in 2012, after Rush Limbaugh famously called then-Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke a "slut" for arguing that ACA should mandate that insurers cover contraceptives.

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Does a woman now have the right to behave—and I know there's a double standard between the way men chase women and running and running around—you know, I'm not going to get there, but you know what I'm talking about. But it used to be that women were held to a little bit of a higher standard. We required modesty from women. Now, are we beyond those days where a woman can behave as a slut, but you can't call her a slut?

In November 2012, on women voters for whom health care is the most important issue:

You can be bought off for that? I mean, boy, all the other issues: the Hispanic problem, social issues, class warfare, you know, we can figure out a way to tackle those. This one, if you're that far down the road and you say you're a human being, I've got my suspicions. You're not—you're without a brain. You have no cognitive function whatsoever, if that's all it takes to buy you off.

Elsewhere, Lewis has asserted that the same arguments put forth for legalizing same sex-marriage could be made in support of slavery. He clarified that he would not own a slave, though, because he's a good guy—it's just that other people could, maybe. As reported by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

In fact, if you really want to be quite frank about it, how does somebody else owning a slave affect me? It doesn’t. If I don’t think it is right, I won’t own one, and people always say, ‘Well, if you don’t want to marry somebody of the same sex, you don’t have to, but why tell somebody else they can’t?' If you don’t want to own a slave, don’t. But don’t tell other people they can’t.

Again, this is a sitting member of Congress we're talking about here.

The challenger: Angie Craig, a former healthcare executive who lost to Lewis by two points in 2016, when a third-party spoiler candidate took home a critical eight percent of the vote. (Sound familiar?) Craig is married to a woman and has four boys, but she's made clear that this race isn't what Lewis thinks of her personal life. "I'm fairly offended by some of the things Jason Lewis has said," she told the Minnesota Post, "but I’m more offended by the votes he’s taken in this Congress." Those votes include ones in favor of the tax bill and the Affordable Care Act, which he has promised to try and repeal again if re-elected this fall.

Jason Lewis is human garbage: As you might expect, Lewis has some takes about families like his opponent's. As unearthed by BuzzFeed News:

I’ll probably get in trouble for this, but I’m still not convinced that it’s a great idea for children to grow up with two moms or two dads. Call me a Neanderthal. I’m not saying it’s bad, I don’t know, there hasn’t been some longitudinal long-term studies on this, but we’ve rushed to this judgment that growing up with two mommies is a wonderful experience. I don’t know, maybe it’s not so wonderful. Maybe it could harm the kid.

I submit that "Jason, I'm doing just fine" would make an excellent epitaph for this man's career in Congress.

Minnesota 8th: A 32-year-old Democratic hopeful takes on a Trump-endorsed state hockey legend

The district: Northeast Minnesota, from the outskirts of Minneapolis to the Canadian border. There are a lot of lakes. Duluth is the largest city. It is white, rural, working-class, deep-red Trump country—the president won here by nearly 16 points.

The incumbent: Democrat Rick Nolan, who served for six years in Congress beginning in 1974 and then took a 32-year break from Washington before un-retiring to run again in 2012, unseating a Tea Partier who had just unseated an 18-year Democratic incumbent in the 2010 wave election. Nolan's staff took to calling him "Rick van Winkle" in a nod to his period of legislative slumber, which is some top-shelf Midwestern humor. Nolan is retiring from Congress at age 74, this time for good. (Allegedly.)

The contenders: The Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate is Joe Radinovich, a 32-year-old former state legislator who was first elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives at age 26. He's running a pretty progressive campaign for the district, backing Medicare for All and the nationwide expungement of marijuana offenses. His opponent is Pete Stauber, a retired police officer and Minnesota high school hockey legend who helped lead nearby Lake Superior State (Mich.) over St. Lawrence University for the 1988 NCAA championship. Republicans love Stauber, who became the first House candidate to earn his very own Trump rally when the president visited Duluth in June.

Sports don't build character, they reveal it: With the score tied and fewer than two minutes left in that 1988 championship game, the puck squirted free in front of the Lake Superior net, and St. Lawrence appeared to have a good look at the go-ahead goal—until Stauber, thinking quickly (and illegally), lowered his shoulder and whacked the net right off the pegs that held it in place. As Mike Mullen explains in the City Pages, a Minneapolis alt-weekly, officials should have awarded St. Lawrence a penalty. But they blew the call, and to this day, Mullen says, Stauber—a law enforcement officer, a public official, a would-be congressman, and a purportedly well-adjusted adult—still won't talk about it.

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Numerous attempts to reach Stauber for this story—through his campaign email account, his St. Louis County contact information, and multiple Stauber-for-Congress campaign surrogates—produced nothing in response. If Stauber has any feelings about knocking the net off, he's keeping them to himself.

Judge for yourself!

Look, Stauber is a MAGA drone with an emaciated policy agenda who, if elected to Congress, would doubtless work to make this country a worse place to live. But it seems that he is also an unrepentant cheater who exhibits a baffling refusal to acknowledge even the most inconsequential of his personal shortcomings. No wonder Trump likes him so much.

New Jersey 3rd: Tom MacArthur's tax bill vote comes back to haunt him

Bill Clark

The district: Parts of Burlington County (so, Philly suburbs and landmark housing policy jurisprudence) and Ocean County (so, Jersey Shore and Chris Christie yelling at hecklers while holding an ice cream cone). The district is pretty wealthy, and about 12 percent black. There's a great turnpike rest stop in Cherry Hill, as far as turnpike rest stops go. Obama won here twice, but Trump took it by 6 points.

The incumbent: Tom MacArthur, who owns the proud distinction of being the only member of his state's congressional delegation—of either party—to vote in favor of the 2017 tax reform legislation, which by some estimates screwed over New Jersey more than any other state. If you represent a swing district and are facing a midterm election that promises to be very tough for your party, working to raises taxes on your constituents is not an optimal choice.

The challenger: Andy Kim, a former Rhodes Scholar and national security official in the Obama administration. He launched his campaign at a grocery store happy hour, complete with iced tea and cookies, which is the single most suburban New Jersey political origin story imaginable. Like most first-time Democratic candidates, he isn't taking corporate PAC money; like an increasing number of them, he has said he won't support Nancy Pelosi for House leadership.

That, my friends, is the scent of desperation: Since Kim has focused his campaign on MacArthur's staunch support for the enormously unpopular Trump tax bill, the incumbent has begun trotting out the big guns. From NJ.com:

"The more voters learn about Andy Kim's radical far-left positions and the fact he was caught cheating on his property taxes in Washington, D.C., the less they will like him," [MacArthur campaign spokesman Chris Russell] said.

Kim returned to New Jersey last year and registered to vote in the state. At the same time, however, he continued to receive a tax break on his Washington condominium apartment only available to people who live in the District.

That sounds like a serious charge, and precisely the kind of thing that no voters should accept of their prospective elected officials. Andy Kim must answer for this outrageous allegat—

The campaign said the tax break automatically was renewed through the bank holding the mortgage, which handles the property tax payments. Document show it was cancelled and Kim refunded $687 in rebates he received for 2017 and 2018.

So! On the one hand, you have a guy who moved to take an average of $8,000 out of 41 percent of New Jersey residents' pockets. On the other hand, you have a guy who, uh, might've checked the wrong box on TurboTax once upon a time. Tough choice, I know.

New Jersey 7th: Home of the lamest carpetbagging accusation in politics

Bill Clark

The district: A bunch of New Jersey commuter towns east of New York City, where the average household income is nearly $160,000. The president's favorite golf course is here. Clinton beat Trump by a single point.

The incumbent: Four-term Republican Leonard Lance, who managed to squander much of his moderate reputation—he opposed both the ACA repeal effort and the tax bill—by stating that he "tend[s] not to believe" the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court justice and serial liar Brett Kavanaugh. As the New York Times notes, Lance attempted to clarify his remarks by stating that he had made them under the assumption that Christine Blasey Ford would not testify before the Senate, but Lance can't afford to make mistakes, and this might be enough of one.

The challenger: Tom Malinowksi, a Polish-born Rhodes Scholar who moved to New Jersey as a child and served in the Obama administration as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. He was instrumental in lobbying Congress to end the government's use of torture and black sites in the War on Terror, and earned special recognition from the late senator John McCain in 2013 for his efforts. In a district in which the high cost of living is squeezing out middle-class constituents, Malinowksi is focusing heavily on affordability, advocating for a $15-per-hour nationwide minimum wage and guaranteed paid parental leave.

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Doesn't everyone have Google Maps by now?: Lance has dismissed Malinowksi as a D.C. insider and shameless opportunist, claiming that he "moved into the district exclusively for the purpose of running for Congress." As Malinowki's campaign manager noted, this is a curious assertion, given that the candidate's residence in Rocky Hill is located 10 minutes from his childhood home in Princeton. A fact-check of this estimate indicates that it may have been a smidge high.

If you're going to call your recently-relocated opponent a "total carpetbagger," you should make sure they moved more than 4.2 miles away from their mom's house first.

New York 19th: A Hudson Valley culture war

Bill Clark

The district: Most of the Hudson Valley, plus the Catskills, an adorable smattering of rolling hills that New Yorkers visit whenever they want to "go to the mountains for a while" but don't feel like leaving the tri-state area. The National Baseball Hall of Fame is here. So is Woodstock. As you might guess based on those two data points, there are a lot of white people. (88.7 percent of the district.)

The incumbent: John Faso, one of only a dozen Republicans who voted against the tax-reform bill, citing its outsize projected impact on New Yorkers. After his offices were besieged by weekly protests over his support for Paul Ryan's failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, perhaps he learned that constituents "don't like it" when you "make everything more expensive for them." He's picked up the Trumpiness this fall, pitching himself as the anti–MS-13 candidate and claiming that food-stamp recipients are drug dealers who want to sell your kids heroin while you pay for their milk.

The challenger: Antonio Delgado, a 41-year-old Schenectady native who graduated from nearby Colgate University, earned a Rhodes Scholarship, and then attended Harvard Law School. He's neck-and-neck with Faso in the fundraising battle and has gone hard after his opponent's health-care vote, calling for a public option while stopping short of endorsing Medicare for all. He's also black, and he once recorded a rap album that criticized capitalism, condemned white supremacy, and used occasional swear words. In news that will shock you, Faso and friends are blowing on their trusty dog whistles as hard as they can. From the Times:

“Mr. Delgado’s lyrics are offensive,” Mr. Faso said in response to questions from the Times. “It’s his responsibility as a candidate to answer for the controversial views he expressed in his lyrics and whether he continues to hold these views today.”

The Congressional Leadership Fund, the conservative political group closely aligned with Speaker Paul Ryan, recently began broadcasting an ad on local radio stations that features a portion of Mr. Delgado’s rap verses, accompanied with ominous background music and a narrator who describes the lyrics as a “sonic blast of hateful rhetoric and anti-American views.”

In case those men didn't scream the subtext loudly enough, here's what Faso's pal Gerald Benjamin—a guy who has almost certainly said, "Why can they use it, but I can't?" before—had to say on the subject.

“Is a guy who makes a rap album the kind of guy who lives here in rural New York and reflects our lifestyle and values?” said Mr. Benjamin, a longtime political science professor, adding that he personally did not consider rap music to be “real music.”

He later apologized for any "unintended distress" his remarks may have caused. He did not apologize for what has become the modern Republican Party's shameful electoral strategy: If constituents don't like your record, kick off the culture wars and hope for the best.

Time for some music: I mean, judge for yourself.

I hear a Gandhi name-drop, a reference to his religious convictions, and multiple shoutouts to upstate New York. I'm going to go ahead and say that anyone who professes to be deeply offended by this brand of hip-hop is a little more focused on the lyricist than the lyrics, if you catch my drift.

(My drift is that they are disingenuous bigots.)

New York 22nd: New York's reddest district is up for grabs

Bill Clark

The district: Begins at Binghamton near the Pennsylvania border, moves up to the suburbs east of Syracuse, and extends to the shores of Lake Ontario. All those snowy upstate New York colleges—Binghamton, Colgate, Hamilton, Utica, Cortland—are located here. It is white (nearly 90 percent). It is blue-collar (median income: $52,212). It is solidly Trump country (by 15 points in 2016).

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The incumbent: Republican Claudia Tenney, who used the occasion of the school shooting in Parkland to note how many mass murderers "end up being Democrats"; declared that her House colleagues who didn't applaud Trump's State of the Union address were "un-American" and "don't love our country"; and blamed Ben Carson's $31,000 dining set debacle on "the Deep State." What I am trying to say here is that Claudia Tenney sounds awful.

The challenger: 39-year-old state lawmaker Anthony Brindisi, who is running the only type of race a Democrat can run in this district: a very, very moderate one. Brindisi loves talking about bipartisanship, boasts a perfect rating from the National Rifle Association—better than Tenney's!—and has promised to cast his speaker vote for someone not named Nancy Pelosi. He's not accepting NRA money, though, and has earned the endorsement of pro-gun safety organization Giffords.

Seriously, Claudia Tenney is awful: In a development that will shock you, when reporters asked Tenney to elaborate on her allegations about the partisan leanings of perpetrators of gun violence, she—a sitting member of Congress and alleged functional adult—screamed "FAKE NEWS!" into the microphone and walked away. (The good stuff starts at about 2:20.)

If she loses, I predict Fox News announces her as the newest panelist on The Five before Christmas.

North Carolina 9th: Dan McCready tries to stop one gross bigot from replacing another

Bill Clark

The district: Starts in downtown Charlotte and moves south and east through the rural counties along the North Carolina–South Carolina border. It's about 20 percent black. It's solidly Trump country. (He won by 12 points in 2016.)

The incumbent: Republican Robert Pittenger, who is headed for an early retirement after losing his party's primary. During the 2016 unrest that followed the killing of Keith Lamont Scott by Charlotte police, Pittenger characterized protestors as people who "hate white people because white people are successful and they're not." Good fucking riddance.

The contenders: The GOP hopeful is Mark Harris, a Charlotte pastor who lost the 2016 primary to Pittenger by 134 votes and finished his opponent off properly this time. Harris is the worst type of Christian, one who uses religion to justify his own bigotries: He was a principal organizer of the 2012 initiative to ban same-sex marriage by state constitutional amendment, and of the 2016 effort to pass North Carolina's transphobic bathroom bill. (The former is now unconstitutional; the legislature eventually repealed the latter.) As he indicated in a sermon several years, he still isn't so sure about this modern fad in which women "have jobs" and "are considered people." From ABC News:

"In our culture today, girls are taught from grade school that we tell them that what is most honorable in life is a career, and their ultimate goal in life is simply to be able to grow up and be independent of anyone or anything," said Harris, then the senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Charlotte, adding, "But nobody has seemed to ask the question that I think is critically important to ask: Is that a healthy pursuit for society? Is that the healthiest pursuit for our homes? Is that the healthiest pursuit for our children? Is that the healthiest pursuit for the sexes in our generation?"

The Democrat is Dan McCready, a 35-year-old Marine Corps veteran, who has his work cut out for him in a district Democrats haven't won in decades. On the campaign trail, he emphasizes his faith, distances himself from perpetual GOP bogeywoman Nancy Pelosi, and, when asked about the infamous bathroom bill, he discussed its economic impact instead of focusing on its inherent amorality. His platform includes overt pitches to his would-be African American and Native American constituents, and he hopes that engaging with these voters—not exactly a Pittenger priority—can help him overcome his built-in partisan disadvantage.

Gerrymandering is a scourge on our democracy: North Carolina has some of the grossest partisan gerrymandering in the country, with lines meticulously drawn to ensure 10 safe GOP seats and 3 Democratic seats only because, as one of the Republican officials in charge of redistricting proudly explained in 2016, it isn't possible to create a map with an 11-to-2 ratio. In August, a federal court found this arrangement unconstitutional and ordered the state to create a new map, but after rattling its saber a bit about redrawing the districts in time for the 2018 midterms—yes, these midterms—the judges decided to let them off the hook until 2020. North Carolina has sucked for Democrats for a long time, in large part because their opponents do everything they can to rig the game. After November, the landscape here could look very different.

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Bill Clark

Ohio 1st: Aftab Pureval vs. fuzzy, race-baiting math

Bill Clark

The district: Most of Cincinnati and its suburbs, at that weird spot on the map where Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana somehow converge. Mostly white, and a fair mix of urban and rural areas, and blue- and white-collar jobs. Every time I see Cincy chili, I can't believe human beings eat Cincy chili of their own free will and accord.

The incumbent: Steve Chabot, who was first elected to the House in the 1994 Republican Revolution and served until 2008, when he lost to Democrat Steve Driehaus. Luckily for Chabot, the Tea Party midterms were just around the corner, and sure enough, he snatched the job back in 2010 and hasn't faced a serious challenger since. He's an anti-choice crusader who was one of the architects of the 2003 partial-birth abortion ban, a fact about which he reminds voters at every opportunity and in graphic terms. From his campaign blog, which uses an unsettling amount of Clipart for a professional politician:

The term planned parenthood at first glance sounds innocuous enough. But the organization that goes by that name performs well over 300,000 abortions in America every year. Another way to look at it is this—the population of Cincinnati is approximately 300,000, so Planned Parenthood wipes out the equivalent of the population of Cincinnati—every year.

The challenger: Aftab Pureval, a 36-year-old county court clerk of Tibetan and Indian descent. Born and raised in Ohio, he's crafting his pitch to swing voters, demurring on the subject of universal health care and distancing himself from the Ocasio-Cortez coalition of young, ultra-progressive candidates. He also has a history of using whimsical puppets to make his name—which might sound unfamiliar to Midwestern voters who accustomed to having an incumbent named "Steve"—very easy to remember.

Pureval has out-fundraised Chabot, and the endorsement of President Obama—which Pureval picked up in August—has helped shine a national spotlight on this historically Republican seat.

This week in specious reasoning: After graduating from law school in 2008, Pureval was hired by the D.C. office of White & Case, a law firm that employs thousands of attorneys around the world. Shortly before he began working as a first-year associate—a position that entails zero autonomy—one of the firm's clients, the Libyan government, agreed to pay $1.5 billion to the American victims of the 1988 Lockerbie terrorist attacks. Pureval was born on September 8, 1983, which means that he was six years old when the bombing occurred. And yet, here is how Paul Ryan's super PAC has elected to package this information: by implying that Pureval, who just happens to be a brown person, may have had something to do with it. As a first-grader. (Check out the Hillary Clinton non sequitur at the end.)

Pureval didn't work on the case, or even on cases of that type, when he was at the firm. However, Congress had to approve the settlement, which it did by passing the Libyan Claims Resolution Act in 2008. Guess who voted in favor of it? Steve Chabot! Somehow, his complicity in "selling out Americans" didn't make the ad's final cut.

Texas 7th: John Culberson is missing in action

Tom Williams

The district: Parts of Houston and its western suburbs. This is the district George W. Bush represented when he was in Congress, and it's been held by Republicans since 1966. It's about 30 percent Hispanic and 14 percent black. Mitt Romney won by more than 21 points in 2012, but Hillary Clinton won by 1.4 points in 2016.

The incumbent: John Culberson, a climate-science denier who recently explained his use of campaign funds to buy dinosaur fossils by revealing that he is conducting research into "paleo-climatology." He's also the one who compared Republican efforts to delay the implementation of the Affordable Care Act to the heroic United Airlines Flight 93 passengers who thwarted their September 11 hijackers. ("The whole room said, 'Let’s vote!' I said, like 9/11, 'Let’s roll!'")

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The challenger: 43-year-old Lizzie Fletcher, who has a political origin story that will warm your cold, black, Trump-weary heart. From The Texas Tribune:

In the early spring of last year, Houston attorney Lizzie Pannill Fletcher attended a town hall hosted by her congressman, Republican John Culberson.

As he responded to constituents' questions about his views on health care, gun regulation, immigration and net neutrality, Fletcher didn’t like what she heard.

“I shook his hand, and had a pleasant and brief exchange,” she said.

And then she decided to run against him.

She won a contentious Democratic primary thanks in part to some dubious meddling from the DCCC, which, convinced that Fletcher had the best shot of beating Culberson in the general, released opposition research on Fletcher's chief rival. Since securing the nomination, Fletcher has out-fundraised Culberson, and gone hard after his legacy of opposing Obamacare—a hot-button issue in the district.

All politics is local: Culberson is a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, which he says enabled him to expedite the approval of federal relief funds in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. His problem, though, is that those funds still haven't arrived in the district—and while Fletcher has been a "conspicuous volunteer presence" since the storm took place, according to The Atlantic, Culberson has basically been a ghost.

“Most of my work is done quietly behind the scenes as an appropriator,” Culberson offered by way of explanation. “I’ve discovered there’s no limit to what you can do as long as you don’t mind who gets the credit.”

It’s a nice enough sentiment, but could prove damaging against a campaign centered on “showing up.” To be sure, federal dollars help a community heal, but face time does as well.

When I asked a longtime Republican insider—who requested anonymity to avoid backlash—why they were planning to vote for Fletcher, the source said: “We never saw Culberson after Harvey.”

In a tight race, in a swing district, in a year in which his party is expected to struggle, Culberson's absentee status could be what finally does him in.

Texas 32nd: Colin Allred [insert football cliché here]

Tom Williams

The district: Parts of Dallas and its northeastern suburbs. Southern Methodist University is here. So is the George W. Bush presidential library. It has sizable African-American and Hispanic minorities, and nearly half its residents have earned a bachelor's degree. Clinton edged Trump here by less than two points.

The incumbent: Pete Sessions, the former NRCC chair who once proudly explained that he planned his party's 2010 midterm strategy by learning lessons from the Taliban, which is a metaphor he probably should have workshopped before deploying it in public. You may remember him for allegedly being a dick to President Obama in 2013, or, more recently, for sharing some baffling opinions about the causes of domestic violence:

Dallas County, a few years ago, went through a number of terrible shootings. And I gathered together, they were at the time Republican district judges, and I said "Guys, men, women, we’ve now had I think four or five shootings." One of them was from a big-time guy in Highland Park, who went and killed his wife, just gunned her down. And that was because the judge was unfair, and the woman was unfair. And she demanded something, and he was out. And it was frustration.

The challenger: Colin Allred, a former NFL linebacker—he spent four seasons with the Titans—who became a lawyer after retiring from football, serving for a brief period in the Obama administration. He was an election law attorney in private practice, and it shows on his platform: Allred wants to institute automatic voter registration, pass federal legislation that would end state-level felony disenfranchisement, and make Election Day a national holiday.

Gerrymandering is a scourge on our democracy: Texas has some of the country's most draconian voter ID laws on the books, which act to depress minority turnout at every level. And as Allred likes to joke with his staff, Republicans so lovingly drew this district to keep Sessions' seat safe that its borders literally look like a dog. From Sessions' official web site:

It worked for a long time: Obama lost in 2008 by 11 points, and in 2012 by a whopping 15 points. But as the 2016 results suggest, the demographics here are changing fast. Eight years after helming one of the biggest wave elections in history, Sessions might become the victim of another.

Virginia 7th: Dave Brat is wearing out his welcome

Bill Clark/Getty Images

The district: A swath of counties between Richmond and Charlottesville, bisected by I-64. A ton of Civil War battles happened here. It's about 17 percent black. If you're in the area, Culpeper is a lovely town.

The incumbent: College economics professor Dave Brat, the Tea Party upstart who beat then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the district's Republican primary back in 2014, thanks in large part to the quiet efforts of a little-known media executive named Steve Bannon. In 2017, Brat griped about "paid activists" at his events and lamented that he couldn't hold town halls anymore because, as he put it, "The women are in my grill no matter where I go," which is a badge of honor for every one of his constituents who have decided not to put up with their representative's bullshit any longer.

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The challenger: Abigail Spanberger, a former U.S. postal inspector and CIA operative who spent eight years abroad doing spy stuff before retiring in 2014. In a national security-heavy district—neither Langley nor Quantico are in it, but both are close by—this plays well. Like many first-time Democratic candidates this cycle, she's vowed not to accept corporate PAC money, and yet recently managed to lap Brat in the fundraising battle.

Time for some xenophobia: Earlier this year, thanks to an alleged clerical fuck-up, the Postal Service released an unredacted version (!) of Spanberger's security clearance application to an activist group working with Paul Ryan's super PAC. The agency apologized profusely, but the damage was done: The file revealed that in 2002, while waiting on her CIA background check, Spanberger worked as a substitute English teacher at the Islamic Saudi Academy, a now-closed private school in Fairfax County. A few students of its students went on to become involved in terrorism years after their periods of attendance.

There is not the slightest indication that Spanberger, who was waiting tables at the time and filled in at the school for a teacher on maternity leave, had anything to do with those students, and of course, that job didn't have any effect on the CIA's willingness to hire her. The Congressional Leadership Fund is populated exclusively by shameless hucksters, though, and so they cobbled together this bullshit:

To recap: Their brain-genius argument is that a woman who spent nearly a decade of her life fighting terrorism overseas is, in fact, a secret incubator of homegrown extremists whose candidacy poses a grave danger to the people of central Virginia. Might want to workshop that one a little more, guys.

Utah 4th: Mia Love should win, but she might lose anyway

The district: Parts of Salt Lake City and its suburbs to the south. It's white, but maybe not as white as you'd guess after hearing "parts of Salt Lake City and its suburbs to the south." (80 percent.) Romney beat Obama by 37 points in 2012, which was still his smallest margin of victory in the entire state; in 2016, though, disaffected voters went 39 percent for Trump, 32 percent for Clinton, and the balance for "Someone else, please, for the love of God."

The incumbent: Two-term Republican Mia Love, a 42-year-old black Mormon born to Haitian immigrants in Brooklyn, who today finds herself largely abandoned by the party of which she is nominally a member. The only GOP member of the Congressional Black Caucus, she denounced Trump's child separation policy, opposes his trade war, and even expressed support for gun safety bills after Parkland. Also: "I can't defend the indefensible," she said in January, after he labeled her parents' country of origin a "shithole." She characterized his comments as racist and "unkind," and declared that he "must apologize to both the American people and the nations he so wantonly maligned."

The challenger: Ben McAdams, a former state senator and current Salt Lake County mayor. (Yes, the county and county have separate mayors. I don't know why either!) He has the type of platform you'd expect of a 43-year-old Mormon Democrat: Most notably, he identifies as pro-life, which is an important issue for this socially conservative electorate. But McAdams splits with his opponent on things like repealing Obamacare (she's for it, he isn't), the tax bill (same), and same-sex marriage (he supports it; she was "very disappointed" by the Supreme Court's decision and promised to continue to "battle in support of Utah and American families," neither of which are groups that were affected by that decision, but whatever.)

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Mia Love has a Donald Trump problem: This is a deep-red district, but the contest became a toss-up in the campaign's final weeks because all those voters who couldn't bring themselves to back the president in 2016 don't seem to have much interest in holding the line in 2018. As noted by the Salt Lake Tribune's Robert Gehrke, about twice as many new Democrats as new Republicans have registered in the district over the past two years, and polling shows that McAdams is handily beating Love among independents and even siphoning away 15 percent of Republicans. Americans are tired of living in Trumpland, and 2018's true coin-flip races, just having that little (R) next to your name might be enough to lose you an election.

Washington 8th: Wow, Republicans are still trying to make Dino Rossi happen?!

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The district: Most of the suburbs east and south of Seattle, but also, all the towns along I-90 to the state's geographic center, and then north almost to the Canadian border. Lake Chelan is a poor man's Tahoe. The skiing is good. Mount Rainier is gorgeous for the 14 days per year when it's visible. Pretty wealthy—the average household income is just over $100,000—and about three-quarters white.

Also, I grew up in this district, and my parents still live there. More on them in a minute.

The incumbent: Dave Reichert, a former King County sheriff who helped catch the Green River Killer more than 20 years after the first of his 49 known murders, and then parlayed that bit of fame into what is now a 14-year career in Congress. He's one of a dozen Republicans who voted against Trumpcare, which is the type of thing that has enabled him to retain his seat in four straight presidential elections, including 2016, in which his party's candidate lost. Perhaps unwilling to press his luck any further, he announced his retirement in January.

The contenders: The Democrat is Kim Schrier, a pediatrician and first-time candidate who was inspired to run after growing frustrated with Reichert's reluctance to hold constituent town halls during the health care repeal debate last summer. She favors a public option, with the goal of "moving us toward" Medicare for All. Schrier advanced after a weird primary in which she won only 18.7 percent of the vote, thanks to three Democrats behind her split who an additional 31.5 percent between them. She'll need those supporters to turn out for her in November.

Her opponent is Dino Rossi, an off-and-on state senator who is now in his 15th consecutive year of failing to become the star for which the state's Republican Party always hoped. There is nothing Rossi loves more than losing statewide elections: for governor in 2004 and again in 2008, and then for U.S. Senate in 2010. Part of me is genuinely surprised that the party couldn't come up with anyone else off their bench to run in such a competitive contest.

On the issues, he told the Seattle Times that "it's not out of the question that human element can have an impact on the environment," but left it to the "scientists" to argue about the extent of that impact.

A personal story: Several weeks ago, while canvassing the neighborhood on a beautiful summer afternoon, Dino Rossi came face-to-face with none other than my 70-year-old father, who immediately recognized the Republican candidate standing on his doorstep. My dad votes for Democrats and is infuriated by Trump, but he is also the kind of person who prizes civility and decorum, and always sees the value in engaging with people, especially those with whom he disagrees, for the sake of The Discourse. Thus, he thanked Rossi for his time, but issued a quick disclaimer that he planned to back Schrier.

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To this, Rossi replied: “So, you’re saying you want Nancy Pelosi to become the next Speaker of the House!”

This brand of unimaginative, reflexive fearmongering both surprised and amused my dad, who asked if that was really Rossi's pitch to voters. From there, he says, they went back and forth for awhile, debating the merits of the Affordable Care Act (my dad likes it; Dino doesn't), tax policy (there is no state income tax in Washington, which means public schools here never have any money), and that one time Rossi helped balance the state budget (in 2003). After ten minutes of what my dad happily describes as "a civil and mostly informed discussion," they exchanged head nods and agreed to respectfully disagree.

Or so he thought! Because as my dad closed the door, Rossi—while walking away, and without turning around—fired off a parting zinger: "I'm going to be your next representative. You'd better get used to it."

(A spokesperson for the Rossi campaign provided me with the following statement: "Dino has no memory of this particular interaction, but seriously doubts he said the last two sentences you quoted and I've never heard him say anything remotely close to that. The rest of the interaction you describe doesn't sound atypical to me.")

If this is how Dino Rossi addresses prospective constituents, all those Ls he’s absorbed over his career are starting to make a lot more sense.

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